HOW I AM DEALING WITH EXHAUSTION AND HEALING!

Greetings all. These past 5 weeks or so have been very draining on me. First with my wife's hospitalization (although she has continued to improve).

As many of you know my wife and I have been caring for disabled adults in out home for over 25 years. While my wife was in hospital the oldest lady we care for (Ann) was also hospitalized with congestive heart failure...She did come home after 4 days in the hospital, although she was not given long to live. So for approximately a month I cared for her and watched her steadily deteriorate. She died Tuesday morning...She had a lot of suffering those last couple of days. Now she is in "heaven"... she did not understand all of what was happening to her given she is developmentally delayed. I still talked to her about her process and going to a better place where she would not have the pain anymore. I saw sadness lift from her eyes when I told her I would miss her, but that it was okay to go. She passed over several hours later.

I knew I was exhausted from the issues with my wife and then Ann, but when the pressure was off of me the day Ann died the exhaustion really piled up and hit me hard. I am just starting to feel a little better, but know I have longer to fully regain my energy level.

Hate to start a post out with such news, but it is part of life, and explains why have not been as active and some of my comments have not been at their best. I decided to hold off of Part 3 of our Mexico trip and instead do a post that I believe is relevant in that I have been out taking some photographs of flowers to help lift my mood and energy levels.

This first photograph is of a wildflower I found during a walk with my dogs on my property...I will let it speak for itself, but it was perfect in helping with my own healing. I am not a professional by any means, yet I could not have captured this flower without a little luck or a guiding hand. I post it here in memory of Ann.

During the same walk I also captured the following:

Shortly after that I found this rock with the most interesting algae or moss pattern I have ever seen:

When I got home from my walk I decided to take a few photos of some of our Spring flowers.

This first daffodil is a miniature variety, measuring only around 4 inches tall (just to the left of it is some lemon balm/lemon mint I raise for herbal teas):

Next is a standard daffodil and another of a slightly different color (only have this one plant left of that type):

We have a couple of different colors of hyacinths, but this is the only photograph that came out to my liking:

This next photograph does not really fit with all the flowers, yet I could not resist putting in in this post. I got a call from my daughter, who lives on a hillside behind my place, telling me to look on the roof of my barn...I put on one of my telephoto lenses and here is what was visiting:

It was squawking at my son-in-law. My daughter said it had an attitude! Turns out it's mate was on the ground feeding and it was keeping watch. We have had them land in our pasture, but this is the first time a Canadian goose landed on my barn roof.

I seem to make my post long. Hope you enjoy them this way. I would rather do a longer quality post, in instead of multiple shorter ones.

Taking these photographs, sorting through them to find the best of what I took, and now putting together this post has helped me regain a little of my energy...I plan on taking some hikes in the hills behind my place this weekend, and hoping for some more photographic opportunities.

Thank you you for viewing my post. In the event I missed someone's comment on the two previous post it was not on purpose. Hoping now life will settle down a little and I can stay on top of my blog, and do some photography excursions.

Nameste